Update on Delbene versus Ruderman

(Sunday, July 15) There was considerable unhappiness at the King County Dems picnic this afternoon. Members of the 45^th LD complained about a Seattle Times article today. 

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2018697037_1stdistrict16m.html

The above article claims that Laura Ruderman’s mother paid for attack ads on fellow Democrat Suzan Delbene.

Margaret Rothschild said she paid for the PAC’s attack ads because she was “very frustrated” that her daughter’s millionaire opponent could self-fund her campaign while her daughter could not.

At a recent 45^th LD meeting, members of the 45^th (which is in Redmond and Kirkland) asked Laura to condemn the attack ads and Laura reportedly refused. The mailers, which cost $115,000 cast Suzan Delbene in a bad light. The concern was that the money should have been spent attacking John Koster rather than a fellow Democrat.

The problem now is that the 45^th LD had endorsed Laura Ruderman. But now they are considering taking back that endorsement and endorsing Darcy Burner instead (who has stayed out of the backstabbing and has focused instead on why we should stop the war in Afghanistan and not go to war with Iran).

There has been talk of an emergency meeting of the 45^th LD Democrats as time is short with ballots scheduled to be mailed out later this week. Progressives would cheer an endorsement of Darcy Burner as she has already received the support of the Progressive Caucus and was also the top vote getting of 1^st CD rank and file Democrats at the State Party meeting on June 1^st. Darcy Burner also leads all Democrats in all of the polls taken in the 1^st CD. It will be interesting to see if the 45^th LD Democrats will in fact change their endorsement. 

Update (Tuesday, July 17, 2012): The 45th Dems had a meeting tonight and agreed to continue their endorsement of Laura – but they will be adding a sheet of paper to their mailers saying they do not approve of any Democrat attacking another Democrat. Now if we could also get Dwight Pelz to adopt this policy maybe would could someday have party unity.